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After more than 60 years of research into child language development, the mechanism that enables children to segment syllables and words out of the strings of sounds they hear, and to acquire grammar to understand and produce language is still quite an enigma.

Skinner argued that children learn language based on behaviorist reinforcement principles by associating words with meanings.

children will never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input alone.

The larynx, also called the voice box, is where the trouble begins: Its location is, or was, supposed to be the key to language.

Scientists have agreed for a while that the organ is lower down the throat in humans than it is in any other primate, or was in our ancestors. And for decades, they thought that low-down larynx was a sort of secret ingredient to speech because it enabled its bearers to produce a variety of distinctive vowels, like the ones that make beet, bat, and boot sound like different words. That would mean that speech—and, therefore, language—couldn’t have evolved until the arrival of anatomically modern Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago

In fact, they propose that the necessary equipment—specifically, the throat shape and motor control that produce distinguishable vowels—has been around as long as 27 million years, when humans and Old World monkeys (baboons, mandrills, and the like) last shared a common ancestor.

Sociology and philosophy of science have an uneasy relationship, while the marriage of history and philosophy of science has—on the surface at least—been more successful.

Interdisciplinary relations between these disciplines will be analysed through social identity complexity theory in order to draw out some conclusions on how the disciplines interact and how they might develop.

You're missing a potentially vital opportunity to practice essential survival skills.

That's the theory explored by a recent report from Nautilus, which focuses on the science of dreaming. For a long time the general consensus has been that dreams, be they delightful or terrifying, are useless: a mish-mash of experiences, impulses, memories, and that random episode of The Walking Dead that you watched just before bedtime, all distilled into a surreal nightmare in which you're being chased through the halls of your old high school by zombies … and for some reason, you're not wearing pants.

Though not formally researched, anecdotes abound from people who've dreamed of a frightening experience only to then live through it in real life

Curiosity is such a basic component of our natures that we are nearly oblivious to its pervasiveness in our lives.

Every night since humans first evolved, we have made what might be considered a baffling, dangerous mistake. Despite the once-prevalent threat of being eaten by predators, and the loss of valuable time for gathering food, accumulating wealth, or having sex, we go to sleep. Scientists have long speculated and argued about why we devote roughly a third of our lives to sleep, but with little concrete data to support any particular theory. Now, new evidence has refreshed a long-held hypothesis: During sleep, the brain cleans itself.

Aliens definitely exist, Britain's first astronaut has said -- and it's possible they're living among us on Earth but have gone undetected so far.

Then, in a tantalizing theory that should probably make you very suspicious of your colleagues, Sharman added: "It's possible they're here right now and we simply can't see them."

A former Pentagon official who led a secret government program to research potential UFOs, revealed in 2017, told CNN at the time that he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.

His theory of universal grammar posits that there's a genetic component to language, and the ability to acquire and comprehend language is innate.

Survey people about a range of issues, ask which issues are a "very big problem for the country," and more Americans will cite "made-up news" than terrorism, illegal immigration, racism or sexism.

Of course, some point the finger primarily at President Trump while others blame irresponsible news outlets. People are using different definitions of "made-up." But the study shows a widespread awareness of what's sometimes called the War on Truth.

1: Pew says "Americans blame political leaders and activists far more than journalists for the creation of made-up news but put the responsibility on the news media to fix it." Only 9% say the onus is mostly on the tech companies.2: When people bemoan made-up news, they're not just talking about politics: 61% of respondents said there's a lot of bogus content out there about entertainment and celebrities.3: "52% of Americans have shared made-up news knowingly and/or unknowingly." Almost everyone says they only found out the info was bogus after sharing.4: Here is a hopeful sign! 78% "say they have checked the facts in news stories themselves." More here...

People often say that quantum physics is weird because it doesn’t seem rational. But of course, if you think about it, quantum physics is actually perfectly rational, if you understand the math. It’s people who typically seem irrational.

In fact, some psychologists have spent their careers making fun of people for irrational choices when presented with artificial situations amenable to statistical analysis. Making allowances for sometimes shaky methodology, there really are cases where people make choices that don’t seem to make much sense.

In 1929, Bohr noted that quantum physics refuted the view that analyzing brain processes could “reveal a causal chain that formed a unique representation of the emotional mental experience.” But in quantum physics, Bohr emphasized, an observer inevitably interacted with whatever was being observed, so “any attempt to acquire a knowledge of such [mental] processes involves a fundamentally uncontrollable interference with their course.”

Albert Einstein is justly famous for devising his theory of relativity, which revolutionized our understanding of space, time, gravity, and the universe. Relativity also showed us that matter and energy are just two different forms of the same thing—a fact that Einstein expressed as E=mc2, the most widely recognized equation in history.

Credit for inventing paper towels goes to the Scott Paper Company of Pennsylvania, which introduced the disposable product in 1907 as a more hygienic alternative to cloth towels. But in the very first physics article that Einstein ever published, he did analyze wicking: the phenomenon that allows paper towels to soak up liquids even when gravity wants to drag the fluid downward.

Again, Einstein didn’t invent solar cells; the first crude versions of them date back to 1839. But he did sketch out their basic principle of operation in 1905. His starting point was a simple analogy: If matter is lumpy—that is, if every substance in the universe consists of atoms and molecules—then surely light must be lumpy as well.

Homo sapiens became sapiens largely because of language.

We can call this problem the radically uneven distribution of language.

If one conceives of consciousness as access to our thoughts for action and report—the so-called ‘access consciousness’ (Block, 1995

“Nothing is fixed. All is in flux,” physicist Alan Lightman wrote in his soaring meditation on how to live with our longing for absolutes in a relative universe, reminding us that all the physical evidence gleaned through millennia of scientific inquiry indicates the inherent inconstancy of the cosmos.

This awareness, so unnerving against the backdrop of our irrepressible yearning for constancy and permanence, was first unlatched when the ancients began suspecting that the Earth, rather than being the static center of the heavens it was long thought to be, is in motion, right beneath our feet. But it took millennia for the most disorienting evidence of inconstancy to dawn — the discovery that the universe itself is in flux, constantly expanding, growing thinner and thinner as stars grow farther and farther apart.

If the universe is constantly expanding, to trace it backward along the arrow of time is to imagine it smaller and smaller, all the way down to the seeming nothingness that banged into the somethingness within which everything exists.

I understand why scientifically minded people experience profound frustration at the nonsense, particularly when we’re forced to consider the public health implications of the anti-vaxxer movement which has been blamed as the root cause for recent outbreaks of measles in the US, a viral infection which can prove devastating for babies and young children. Misinformation can cause immense suffering and we should do our utmost to dispel the lies.

Too many people in scientific spheres seem to revel in dismissing flat-Earthers and anti-vaxxers as garden variety nut-jobs and losers. It may be cathartic – but it’s not productive.

It’s interesting that for a scientific community so perennially pleased with itself, we all seem to be making the same fundamental attribution error by ignoring the notion that belief in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories is propelled by external pressures of fear, confusion and disempowerment. Instead we seem too often satisfied with pinning the nonsense on some bizarrely flourishing individual idiocy.

these outlets were in an ongoing interaction with the mainstream media, one whose goal was to influence what that media produced.

It wasn’t just to inflame their own audiences, it was a political project aimed at “working the refs” — keeping journalists under pressure to alter what they reported and how they reported on it to make the news more friendly to the right.

it only works if those in the mainstream are aware of what’s being said on the right. You can’t pressure someone who is barely aware you exist.

Beyond improvements to your general mood and happiness, taming your anger can have important benefits to your health. Constant stress and aggravation is linked to a range of issues including overeating, insomnia and depression, and angry outbursts increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Anger "is like a blazing flame that burns up our self-control," the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. I aimed to teach myself how to rob it of oxygen and snuff it out.

At the first moment you realize you are experiencing annoyance or anger, just breathe. Ten slow, deep, even breaths do wonders. Sometimes, the annoyance will have passed in just that time.